


A Small Country

by sophinisba



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bonding, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Sequence, F/F, Feels, Gen, Multilingual Character, Pre-Femslash, Sokovia (Marvel), Teambuilding, Trauma, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-30 04:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20808506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: Wanda's used to living like this, in other people's space, using other people's words.





	A Small Country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).

> Content note: discussion of war/political violence and trauma.

It was always a small country. 

No, at times there was no country. No nation, no government, just the unstable mountain ground where other countries' armies slaughtered each other, where generals betrayed their own governments and spies betrayed their local informants. Where foreigners conducted experiments, built cheap apartment blocks, then destroyed them with missiles that weren't supposed to exist. Where they raised a new flag every few years, imposed a new official language, a new school curriculum.

Sokovia was never something to be proud of. And somehow it keeps getting worse. The Avengers' failure, their deepest shame. That's Wanda's home.

* * *

In America she sleeps in a room the size of the apartment where she watched her parents bleed to death. The bed is big, the blankets warm and soft. 

Stark gives her a tablet and a phone, stamped like weapons with his name. "See, you don't even need to read anyone's mind, just communicate like the rest of us," he says, glib, because he gets to do that, bring up the harm she's done whenever he wants. 

"I understand," says Wanda, disliking her accent in English. 

She's used to living like this, in other people's space, using other people's words.

* * *

It's Black Widow who takes charge of her training. Has Wanda fight with telekinesis and without, forbids her from touching other people's minds. (Like there's a switch. Like she can turn off.)

Natasha demonstrates the moves Wanda's supposed to learn. _You were a beautiful dancer,_ Wanda thinks, in the Russian she learned when she was eight. 

She says nothing. They don't talk about what she's seen. Wanda doesn't talk much at all, in any language. She does as she's told, crawls into the too-large bed at the end of every grueling day, gets up to try again in the morning.

* * *

Then one day she slips. It's no worse a mistake than she's made a hundred times, but she falls on her face, and the exhaustion grabs her and she can't get up, can only lie there with her face in her hands. 

Natasha says something quiet and the others leave, and then she's with her on the floor, pulling her up to her knees and kissing the tears from her cheeks. It takes Wanda whole minutes to recognize her native language. 

"_How?_" Wanda whimpers, like a child in her mother's arms. "_No one._"

"_Just us_," Natasha answers. "_I'm with you._"

* * *

No one bothers to learn Sokovian, is what she meant. It's a small country, an unpleasant one, and the few people who choose to visit can get by with Russian, English, or French. Black Widow's reasons could only have been sinister, Wanda knows this. 

All the same, it's beautiful, freeing in a way she never expected. She finds herself talking about a childhood visit to her grandparents' village. How she cursed its dusty streets and smelly outhouses, said she'd never live like that, would find a way to get out of Sokovia. 

She never apologized to her father. 

Natasha listens.

* * *

The team speaks English, and increasingly they talk to Wanda and she talks back, like she might really be part of the team. 

It's different when they're alone. The little girl who spoke Sokovian never got a chance to grow up, she realizes. She's growing up now.

Natasha's opening up too. She tells her, in Russian, about the Red Room, and Wanda tells her about what she saw when they first touched.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I understand now that it was wrong." 

"Don't be," says Natasha. "Those memories are part of me. And your powers are part of you."

* * *

"Don't trick me," Natasha says. "Don't make me see something that's not real."

"I wouldn't."

Natasha hesitates. "It's a useful ability. Maybe we'll try that someday. But for now... you can look. You can touch."

It's immediate, the power that Wanda's been holding back surges gorgeous and steady through her hands. But after all their talking, she's not discovering any secrets. It's more like putting pictures to words, and then seeing the pictures come to life, colors blooming. Wanda's not unlocking anything. Natasha is letting her in. 

_This is me_, they both seem to say.

This could be Wanda's home.


End file.
